Northern Arizona University opens second Tucson campus

May 10, 2006 - Flagstaff may be more than four hours north of
Tucson, but taking classes from its university may only be minutes
away.

Northern Arizona University opened its second distance learning
campus in Tucson May 1.

NAU-Tucson North campus, 3895 N. Business Park Drive, can be
seen while driving on Interstate 10, just north of Prince Road.

For more than 30 years, NAU has offered distance-learning
programs for non-traditional students. Classes are offered away
from NAU's primary university in Flagstaff. There are more than 30
sites throughout Arizona where students can take NAU courses, said
Fred Hurst, NAU's vice-president for extended programs.

"NAU has a long history of serving students at a distance," he
said. "We've been doing it for decades."

NAU-Tucson North is a bit different than its other NAU Tucson
campus, located on Pima Community College's Community Campus, 401
N. Bonita Ave.

NAU-Tucson North will offer onsite classrooms for Tucson
students, offering primarily evening classes and some Web-based
instruction, said Patricia Diaz, area coordinator for NAU Distance
Learning in Tucson.

For more than eight years, NAU offered Tucson students courses
relying primarily on local businesses and high schools to provide
the meeting space. With the Tucson-North campus, that will no
longer be an issue, Diaz said.

The campus will offer five large classrooms, a computer lab,
registration and financial aid services as well as undergraduate
and graduate advising.

"We're hoping we can reach the community," Diaz said.

NAU-Tucson North will provide education to undergraduate and
graduate students. In order to enroll in the distance-learning
program, students are asked to have already completed an
associate's degree with a community college, Diaz said.

More than 1,000 students will be served by the new location. The
new offices come at a time when demand is high and students are
plentiful, she said.

"We opened up our new campus in response to a growth that we've
experienced in the last couple of years," she said.

Within the past five years, course demand has dramatically
increased in Tucson and the other distance learning sight could not
keep up with it, Diaz said.

The Tucson-North campus will offer a variety of programs, she
said, including business administration, hotel and restaurant
management, criminal justice and elementary education.

In the fall, students will be able to register for a new
program, one that will ultimately result in a bachelor's of arts in
liberal studies degree.

"It's nice because it's not as specialized as some of the other
programs," she said. "So when students don't fit into those
specialized categories, this is one that fits in very well."

The typical distance learning student taking classes at NAU are
those going back to school and are already established, some with
families and who have been out in the real world, Diaz said.

That is why evening courses and online courses work so well for
such a large number of students, she said.

However, undergraduate growth is growing steadily at NAU,
causing a mix in traditional and non-traditional students, she
said.

"I would say the majority of our students are the
non-traditional students, who can't go to a traditional campus,
such as the UA, because most classes are offered during the day,"
Diaz said. "(It's) the student who is working full time, who has a
family and is transitioning and going back to school."

"This program has been set up to meet that market," she
said.

Many local educational institutions are not meeting the needs of
many Tucson students, Hurst said.

"We felt we needed to try to serve what we feel is a strong
underserved need in the Tucson area," he said. "We have a quality
product, a quality education experience and we're very
flexible."

It costs $224 per credit hour for undergraduate students to
enroll at NAU-Tucson campuses. It is $248 per credit hour for
graduate courses.